Release Date: 14/02/2017
Played On: Win
Available On: NS / PS4 / Stadia / Win / XBO
Time Played: 21h
Progress: Completed
Developer: Rebellion Developments
Publisher: Rebellion Developments
We're back again with the gruff sniper series that keeps on giving, or something like that. It's actually been a while since I played through a game series in fairly rapid succession, which says a lot about how much fun I had sniping Nazis with my trusty rifle. After the welcomed improvements we saw in Sniper Elite 3, can this entry live up to the high standards already established?
This time around, we see our burly every-man hero Karl Fairburne working his way through Italian hot spots, directly after the events of the previous game. There's some new Nazi weapon that we need to locate and destroy, as well as a bunch of officers who need assassinating along the way. To be honest, I didn't pay attention to the story a whole lot this time around, as I was more interested in getting stuck into the open world and setting up awesome long-distance sniper kills. Ultimately, I don't need a lot of motivation to want to kill Nazi bad guys in a video game, so for once I don't need a strong narrative to keep things moving.
Plus, after the highly enjoyable map layouts in Sniper Elite 3, I was expecting more of the same in Sniper Elite 4, with some graphical improvements and possibly a few little interesting developments to top it off. I was really looking forward to playing this sequel, if only to see how everything would be taken up a notch. After all, the jump from 2 to 3 was large enough to be noticeable and brought a whole bunch of interesting systems and features to the franchise. If only lightning had struck twice and I could say the same thing about this 4th entry… if only I could.
Let's be fair though, as this is far from a bad game, and it definitely features some noted improvements on the series. For starters, the maps are much larger and there's a lot more going on in every scenario. Instead of large open areas skirted by elevated sniping positions, these maps are much more realistic and feature dense urban environments, along with sprawling countryside hamlets. Thankfully there are still the same kind of Nazi bunkers and enclosed facilities to infiltrate, but the major difference in Sniper Elite 4 is the size and density of these new locations.
Not only does this make the game's world feel much more authentic and accurate, but it allows for different enemy movements and actions. Back in the rubble-strewn city of Berlin, most of the action revolved around enemies grouped together in the streets, or snipers hiding on rooftops. Through the open arenas in Africa, soldiers patrolled open ruins and bushland, or waited in strategically located watch towers. In Sniper Elite 4, the enemy soldiers and officers feel like they belong in their locations much more than ever before, which goes a long way to increasing the overall immersion and war-time accuracy.
Officers are often found indoors, either sticking to an office they've had shoved into an empty farmhouse, or keeping an eye on their troops and checking on the men. Soldiers take up posts that make sense, either at key points of interest, entrances, or in structures that give them a better vantage point. There's a definite sense that the enemy know we're out there, and that we're headed their way. For better or worse, everything feels like there's been a big effort put in to ensure that locations and the enemies posted there actually makes sense.
While this ends up turning Sniper Elite 4 into something of a more engaging game to play through, it also manages to lose something that I really enjoyed about Sniper Elite 3. There's always a struggle in video games to balance authenticity and realism with gameplay that's fun for players to experience. After all, a hyper-realistic game about war is never going to be much fun, as war itself is horrific and something we all try to avoid as much as possible in our real lives. However, playing as a gamified super hero badass one-man-army is something else entirely, and offers an enjoyable bit of escapism that's fun to experience.
Consider then, that Sniper Elite 4 presents the player with a lot more realism and authenticity, despite still being quite a 'gamey' take on the second world war. I found myself wondering whether I preferred the fun of those African arenas in Sniper Elite 3, or the challenging authenticity of this new instalment. Suffice to say that even having to make that decision kind of ruins the overall escapism of the game, as I constantly questioned whether I was enjoying myself. To be honest, while I know that I had a good time playing through the game, I still can't be sure if I like it more or less than its predecessor.
That small nugget of confusion is enough to rattle my cage and leave me feeling a little unsatisfied with the overall Sniper Elite 4 experience. Previously, I was sure that I'd had a great time romping around the open arenas, shooting bad guys from as far away as possible and sneaking around to find the perfect sniper's nest. I realise now that even though it had much more of an 'arcade' feel to the gameplay loop, Sniper Elite 3 was actually more fun than its sequel.
Not that playing through Sniper Elite 4 was a chore or anything of the sort, in fact I still enjoyed myself from start to finish and am glad to have played it when I did. After all, the game is still very much the same as others and all of the differences can easily be ignored in favour of all the fun to be had in each level. This time around we're often tasked with focusing on patience and stealth gameplay in order to find those perfect situations where you can pop a bullet between an officer's eyes and watch his skull explode in glorious slow motion.
To put it another way, finding opportunities for satisfying sniping in these new maps is a lot more difficult than ever before. There are less obvious locations that provide a wide view of an area filled with bad guys, and it's more about finding the perfect time and place to take out individual soldiers. One of the most frustrating changes was that sound masking opportunities had been reduced significantly. In other games it was fairly easy to find a generator or something that would mask the sound of our rifle shots, but they're few and far between in Italy.
I often found myself in a situation where I had crawled my way to a nicely hidden location, only to be revealed immediately when I took a shot at some low-level grunt who happened to be in my sights. The whole 'shoot-then-move' thing is great if you're trying to be a super realistic sniper and spend a whole day slowly working through each map, but it kind of sucks If you just fired up the game for a half hour window and want to shoot some stuff. Sadly this is where the increased authenticity gets in the way of some enjoyable gameplay, no matter where either end sits on the realism scale.
Although, as I mentioned earlier, it's not all bad. In fact, it just meant that I had to rethink my expectations of what I was going to get from a Sniper Elite game in the first place. Of course, I always expect to have fun and be entertained one way or another, but this went from being a feast of beautiful long distance kills, to a close-quarters stealth game with little else on offer. It's simply a bi-product of the dense Italian towns and interiors that offer fewer opportunities to use a rifle, especially when a silenced pistol or a sneaky melee attack gets the job done quicker and more quietly.
There were even some levels where I didn't end up firing a single shot from my sniper rifle, as every time I tried I was quickly swarmed by enemies who heard the gun and ran to my location. On one hand I appreciate the effort to change things up, but at the other I was left feeling disappointed by the time the credit rolled. Needless to say that when I load up a game about being a badass sniper picking off Nazis left right and centre, I want to be sniping the heads off enemy bodies with my long distance scope and high-powered rifle. I'm not after a close-combat stealth experience with my relatively shit pistol that ends up being more useful thanks to its silencer and short range.
Hence why, if you asked me, I'd note Sniper Elite 3 as being a better game than Sniper Elite 4, even though it technically isn't. The maps are bigger, more detailed, more authentic, and more challenging; while everything looks better, plays better, and is much more interesting to discover along the way. However, none of that really matters when the overall gameplay loop is much less enjoyable, despite being more sophisticated and technically complex. Maybe I'm just an idiot who likes simpler games, or maybe popping the heads off countless soldiers in a big open map is a lot more fun than waiting for ages between kills.
I guess at this point it's worth jumping the gun to say that I've also played Sniper Elite 5, and even though it continues the changes made in Sniper Elite 4, it manages to return to the fun gameplay loop that was a big part of Sniper Elite 3. Of course, I'll write more about that when I get to my post about Sniper Elite 5, but I feel it's worth mentioning as it shows that Sniper Elite 4 doesn't have to suffer from its authenticity and raised complexity. In fact, it's a real shame that it now feels like the awkward middle child of the franchise that could have done so much better.
With each map being more complex and detailed, bringing combat into close quarters instead of wide open long-shots, the game itself felt more compartmentalised. Inside each level were small areas that took too long to clear, as it made more sense to wait for patrols to fall out of sync, opening up individuals for a quiet takedown. This loop ended up feeling like I was taking small little nibbles out of the objectives instead of large satisfying bites. It's really disappointing at the end of the day because there's so much to love about this new and improved design, but it ended up not quite hitting the mark for me.
I suppose that if I want to play a close-combat stealthy war game, I would expect to look elsewhere and avoid a title that professes to be about using a sniper rifle instead. It's not that Sniper Elite 4 does anything super bad, as it's an improvement on the series in many ways, but there's something missing from the moment-to-moment gameplay that ended up leaving a bad taste in my mouth as I wished for the unencumbered fun of the previous game. It stands to reason that these are talented developers who can make a fun open world to get stuck into, but not everyone can find that spark that keeps bringing me back to this series.
It's a shame that this was a miss, as I nearly didn't bother playing Sniper Elite 5 when it came out earlier this year, but I'm glad I gave it a go, as it managed to bring back a little special sauce. Meanwhile, if you're interested in the series and thinking about whether to skip this one thanks to its little miss-steps, I'd still recommend giving it a go, if only to squeeze whatever amount of fun you can from what is actually a solid entry to the franchise. Just remember to upgrade your pistols, as you'll be using them a lot more in this game than any of the previous titles.